Poems from Magma, MsLexia, Under the Radar, etc. Many have been shortlisted in competitions - Bridport, Manchester, etc. It starts back in 1810 with a Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandmother in the States and works through generations of women until Katie, the author, appears on p.81. Many ghosts appear, and foxes.
Many of the more striking lines are at the starts/ends of poems -
- Some days the ghosts forget they don't belong,/ push through like tough buds/ spat from the mouths of trees ... We cannot navigate by ghosts, though we are still,/ so many of us, trying (p.30)
- At night his body was a meadow and she/ was an unbridled horse/ bending at a still pool to drink (p.46)
- We cannot navigate/ by ghosts, though we are still,/ so many of us, trying (p.52)
- Her body is a flood/ making all roads out impassable (p.79)
There's much I don't understand. The 7-page "Portrait of My Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandmother as Emily Shelby in Uncle Tom's Cabin" is beyond me, and there are puzzling lines elsewhere - e.g.
- A victory of half-drunk soda, empty dishes. Neon tubing flickers like lightning. She gathers leftovers closer in like clouds (p.35)
- My mother's song was a caterpillar/ trundling a city of grass (p.48)
- He curled and lengthened beside her on the mattress,/ his body the weight of a filled suitcase (p.69)
p.26 isn't the first time I've seen types of barbed wire used in a poem.
My favourite poem is "On Telling My Grandmother How the MS John Ericsson Was Scrapped in Bilbao, Spain, in 1965". I like "White Woman Tears" too, in which the persona wonders how to respond poetically to the news that her ancestors were slaveowners.
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